Thursday 10 November 2022 04:53 AM Furious Arizona GOPs slam 'national disgrace' at the ballot box as 17,000 votes ... trends now

Arizona GOP officials slammed officials in Maricopa County after they announced 17,000 votes would need to be recounted when tabulators failed on election night. 

Officials in Arizona's most populous county said about 7 percent of the ballots were affected by a printing mishap that prevented vote counters from reading them.

GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, who has been closing the election night gap on Democratic rival Katie Hobbs, said the situation in Maricopa was outrageous after initial reports from the county yesterday had her beating Hobbs 70.6 percent to 29.4 percent.

Speaking to Fox's Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, Lake said one of her first actions as governor would be to revamp the state's voting process to avoid the current failures. 

'We need to get rid of these machines that are not reliable, and we've seen the kinds of problems they can cause,' Lake said. 'We're sick of being the embarrassment that Maricopa County has made us become and we won't do another election like this.' 

Joining the outrage was Arizona Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, who is behind five points against Democrat Adrian Fontes. 

'Maricopa's election systems are a national disgrace,' Finchem tweeted. 'We waited 24 hours and got a measly 62k votes. Even third world countries count faster than that.'